Wyatt’s Hurricane

‘I suppose you could call it a proposal,’ Wyatt said, rubbing the side of his jaw. ‘I couldn’t go on living at the Base, not with you giving up the exotic life of an air hostess, so we’d have to find a house. How would you like to live somewhere up here?’

‘Oh, Dave, I’d like that very much,’ she cried, and they were both incoherent for a considerable time.

After a while Wyatt said, ‘I don’t understand why you were so standoffish; you clung on to Causton like a blood brother last night.’

‘Damn you, Dave Wyatt,’ Julie retorted. ‘I was scared. I was chasing a man and women aren’t supposed to do that. I got cold feet at the last minute and was frightened of making a fool of myself.’

‘So you did come here to see me?’

She ruffled his hair. ‘You don’t see much in people, do you, Dave? You’re so wrapped up in your hurricanes and formulas. Of course I came to see you.’ She picked up his hand and examined the fingers one by one. ‘I’ve been out with lots of guys and sometimes I’ve wondered if this time it was the one – women do think that way, you know. And every time you got in the way of my thinking, so I knew I had to come back to straighten it out. I had to have you in my heart altogether or I had to get you out of my system completely – if I could. And you kept writing those deadpan letters of yours which made me want to scream.’

He grinned. ‘I was never very good at writing passion. But I see I’ve been properly caught by a designing woman, so let’s celebrate.’ He walked over to the car. ‘I filled a Thermos with your favourite tipple – Planter’s Punch. I departed from the strict formula in the interests of sobriety and the time of day – this has less rum and more lime. It’s quite refreshing.’

They sat overlooking the Negrito and sampled the punch. Julie said, ‘I don’t know much about you, Dave. You said last night that you were born in St Kitts – where’s that?’

Wyatt waved. ‘An island over to the south-east. It’s really St Christopher, but it’s been called St Kitts for the last four hundred years. Christophe, the Black Emperor of Haiti, took his name from St Kitts – he was a runaway slave. It’s quite a place.’

‘Has your family always lived there?’

‘We weren’t aborigines, you know, but there have been Wyatts on St Kitts since the early sixteen hundreds. They were planters, fishermen – sometimes pirates, so I’m told – a motley crowd.’ He sipped the punch. ‘I’m the last Wyatt of St Kitts.’

‘That’s a shame. What happened?’

‘A hurricane in the middle of the last century nearly did for the island. Three-quarters of the Wyatts were killed; in fact, three-quarters of the population were wiped out. Then came the period of depression in the Caribbean – competition from Brazilian coffee, East African sugar and so on, and the few Wyatts that were left moved out. My parents hung on until just after I was born, then they moved down to Grenada where I grew up.’

‘Where’s Grenada?’

‘South along the chain of islands, north of Trinidad. Just north of Grenada are the Grenadines, a string of little islands which are as close to a tropical paradise as you’ll find in the Caribbean. I’ll take you down there some day. We lived on one of those until I was ten. Then I went to England.’

‘Your parents sent you to school there, then?’

He shook his head. ‘No, they were killed. There was another hurricane. I went to live with an aunt in England; she brought me up and saw to my schooling.’

Julie said gently, ‘Is that why you hate hurricanes?’

‘I suppose it is. We’ve got to get down to controlling the damn’ things some time, and I thought I’d do my bit. We can’t do much yet beyond organizing early warning systems and so on, but the time will come when we’ll be able to stop a hurricane in its tracks, powerful though it is. There’s quite a bit of work being done on that.’ He smiled at her. ‘Now you know all about David Wyatt.’

‘Not all, but there’s plenty of time for the rest,’ she said contentedly.

‘What about your life story?’

‘That will have to wait, too,’ she said, pushing away his questing hand and jumping up. ‘What about that swim you promised?’

They got into the car and Julie stared up at the viridian-green hills of the Massif des Saints. Wyatt said, ‘That’s bad country – infertile, pathless, disease-ridden. It’s where Favel held out until he was killed. An army could get lost up there – in fact, several have.’

‘Oh! When was this?’

‘The first time was when Bonaparte tried to crush the Slave Revolt. The main effort was in Haiti, of course, but as a side-issue Le Clerc sent a regiment to San Fernandez to stifle the slave rebellion here. The regiment landed without difficulty and marched inland with no great opposition. Then it marched up there – and never came out.’

‘What happened to it?’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘Ambushes – snipers – fever – exhaustion. White men couldn’t live up there, but the blacks could. But it swallowed another army – a black one this time – not very long ago. Serrurier tried to bring Favel to open battle by sending in three battalions of the army. They never came out, either; they were on Favel’s home ground.’

Julie looked up at the sun-soaked hills and shivered. ‘The more I hear of the history of San Fernandez, the more it terrifies me.’

Wyatt said, ‘We West Indians laugh when you Americans and the Europeans think the Antilles are a tropical paradise. Why do you suppose New York is flooded with Puerto Ricans and London with Jamaicans? They are the true centres of paradise today. The Caribbean is rotten with poverty and strife and not only San Fernandez, although it’s just about as bad here as it can get.’ He broke off and laughed embarrassedly. ‘I was forgetting you said you would come here to live – I’m not giving the place much of a build-up, am I?’ He was silent for a few minutes, then said thoughtfully, ‘What you said about doing research in the States makes sense, after all.’

‘No, Dave,’ said Julie quietly. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t begin our lives together by breaking up your job – it wouldn’t be any good for either of us. We’ll make our home here in San Fernandez and we’ll be very happy.’ She smiled. ‘And how long do I have to wait before I have my swim?’

Wyatt started the car and drove off again. The country changed as they went higher to go over the shoulder of the mountains, plantations giving way to thick tangled green scrub broken only by an occasional clearing occupied by a ramshackle hut. Once a long snake slithered through the dust in front of the slowly moving car and Julie gave a sharp cry of disgust.

‘This is a faint shadow of what it’s like up in the mountains,’ observed Wyatt. ‘But there are no roads up there.’

Suddenly he pulled the car to a halt and stared at a hut by the side of the road. Julie also looked at it but could see nothing unusual – it was merely another of the windowless shacks made of rammed earth and with a roughly thatched roof. Near the hut a man was pounding a stake into the hard ground.

Wyatt said, ‘Excuse me, Julie – I’d like to talk to that man.’

He got out of the car and walked over to the hut to look at the roof. It was covered by a network of cords made from the local sisal. From the net hung longer cords, three of which were attached to stakes driven into the ground. He went round the hut twice, then looked thoughtfully at the man who had not ceased his slow pounding with the big hammer. Formulating his phrases carefully in the barbarous French these people used, he said, ‘Man, what are you doing?’

The man looked up, his black face shiny with sweat. He was old, but how old Wyatt could not tell – it was difficult with these people. He looked to be about seventy years of age, but was probably about fifty. ‘Blanc, I make my house safe.’

Wyatt produced a pack of cigarettes and flicked one out. ‘It is hard work making your house safe,’ he said carefully.

The man balanced the hammer on its head and took the cigarette which Wyatt offered. He bent his head to the match and, sucking the smoke into his lungs, said, ‘Very hard work, blanc, but it must be done.’ He examined the cigarette. ‘American – very good.’

Wyatt lit his own cigarette and turned to survey the hut. ‘The roof must not come off,’ he agreed. ‘A house with no roof is like a man with no woman – incomplete. Do you have a woman?’

The man nodded and puffed on his cigarette.

‘I do not see her,’ Wyatt persisted.

The man blew a cloud of smoke into the air, then looked at Wyatt with blood-flecked brown eyes. ‘She has gone visiting, blanc.’

‘With all the children?’ said Wyatt quietly.

‘Yes, blanc.’

‘And you fasten the roof of your house.’ Wyatt tapped his foot. ‘You must fear greatly.’

The man’s eyes slid away and he shuffled his feet. ‘It is a time to be afraid. No man can fight what is to come.’

‘The big wind?’ asked Wyatt softly.

The man looked up in surprise. ‘Of course, blanc, what else?’ He struck his hands together smartly and let them fly up into the air. ‘When the big wind comes – li tomber boum’

Wyatt nodded. ‘Of course. You do right to make sure of the roof of your house.’ He paused. ‘How do you know that the wind comes?’

The man’s bare feet scuffled in the hot dust and he looked away. ‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I know.’